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5 Reasons Why a Tag Management System Should be the Foundation of Your Data Strategy

In lockstep with the rise of MarTech has been the rise in use of tags, also known as ‘pixels’. Virtually every technology has its own proprietary tag that not only powers user engagement, but tracks unique visitor behavior information. A study by Ghostery using real-user data points showed that large web sites average 75+ digital technologies to power their marketing, customer experience and business intelligence efforts (despite most people vastly underestimating this number). All these tags need to be loaded in different places, based on different rules and at different times.

That’s a lot to manage. It can strain a company’s IT resources, slow campaign timelines and limit the ability of marketers to launch creative, impactful customer engagement initiatives. It all adds up to increased costs, missed revenue opportunities and strained internal relationships.

Here are 5 reasons why every company leveraging technology for customer experience needs to adopt a Tag Manager as the foundation of their data strategy:

Create and leverage a flexible, best-in-class technology stack – Technology proliferation is not slowing down and consumer behavior is constantly changing. This means it’s critical to have a foundation that can flexibly manage the implementation, removal and coordination of data between all these systems. That foundation is a tag management system that allows the data at the heart of all customer engagements to flow quickly and intelligently to wherever it needs to be.

Reduced reliance on IT – Not only do tag management systems allow marketers and analysts to launch their own tags quickly and easily without help from IT, but these systems also enable developers to do more powerful tag implementations that deliver richer data with less upfront work. This way developers can reduce time spent on manual and one-off tag implementations and focus on building powerful applications of these rich data sets. Most CTOs agree that they expect at least a 5x return for each developer headcount investment, or a contribution of $500K-$1M toward top-line revenue.

Quicker implementation timelines = faster time to revenue – The implementation and management of technology is a significant barrier to unlocking the revenue-generating power of technology enhancements. Lowering this barrier not only drives more revenue due to increasing adoption and usage of new tools, but shortens the time to revenue from using these tools, driving up the overall value of the entire stack.

Better site and app performance – Tag management systems can significantly improve the performance of sites and apps by ensuring tags only load when needed and providing a superior architecture for tag loading.

Increased user privacy and data governance – Tag management systems give you the ability to audit data collection and usage, while also allowing users a central point from which their data collection preferences can be managed.

Matt Parisi is the Senior Manager of Product Marketing at Tealium. He has over 10 years of strategic marketing experience across both traditional and digital marketing channels. His experience spans industries working both at consultancies and client-side.